Words walk humbly

Words walk humbly,

offering themselves in place

of their letters, protected

from erasure or white-out.

I pick up a word, carelessly

dropped and disregarded;

in my hand it feels smooth

and cool, live a river stone.

Words spill from my hands,

cascading into streams and flows

of other words, others’ words,

joining wet stones on the sand,

slowly eroded by waves, and rain.

I pick up words on the sand and

send them skipping across waves,

edging into ocean’s surface sheen,

reflecting glimpses of sun’s light

slicing the day.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVersePoets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph by Fran Hogan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Poetry at Work: Workplace Challenges and Problems

The workplace, like the rest of the world we live in, is a mixture of the good and bad, of nobility of purpose and unbridled ambition, of supportive encouragement and backstabbing politics. Someone once told me that if you get more than two people in a room, you have the ingredients for conflict, politics and factions. Working in high-pressure workplaces only intensifies this tendency for conflict (additionally fueled by intra-office email).

To make sense of this, and sometimes to seek a resolution, I write poems. From what I hear from friends and colleagues, this could become an entire genre of poetry – the poetry of workplace conflict.

To continue reading, please see my post today at TweetSpeak Poetry.

Photograph by Junior Libby via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Words

Since Friday at about 10 a.m. Central time, it’s been a tsunami of words about what happened in Newton, Connecticut.For the first few hours, many of the words were incorrect – we experienced the hypersensitivity of the news cycle as the media tried to be first with most, watching what’s was happening on social media, competing against each other, as the horror finally unfolded behind them.

Too many words. Useless, wrong words. It took some time for the right words to begin crowding out the wrong words.

Then came the groping for understanding. What happened is unfathomable. And our human minds began reaching for something – anything – that would explain this. We need to explain this. If we can’t explain this, we are afraid it can happen again. This is the stuff of our worst nightmares, and we are afraid we will never be able to explain it, that we will never know the reason for why the gunman did what he did.

Not enough words. Too few words.

I thought of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, something he wrote in The Gulag Archipelago: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

Words we don’t like to hear.

We are writing blog posts, emails, poems. We are drawing pictures and posting photographs. We are offering meditations. We’re ranting against guns and video games, and we are defending guns and video games. One blogger I read suggested we stop everything and simply observe a prolonged silence.

Painful words, encouraging words. We don’t know how to comfort a father and mother whose six-year-old daughter was gunned down for no apparent reason other than a lunatic decided to do it. We don’t know how to comfort a town which lost 20 year children and seven adults.

I made myself read the names and birth years of all of the victims. I lost it when I hit the third on the list, but I made myself read through every name on the list. These were real people with hopes and dreams and problems and life and whole lives ahead. They laughed and cried and thought that this Friday would be a school day like any other school day.

No words. The fact is, words fail here. The only way to comfort is to be there and weep with the families. That may be the most important thing we can do. Very few of us know what this is like, what it is to go through something like this, something that changes you completely and forever.

We look at our own children and our grandchildren, and we tremble. We have no words here, either, but we have arms, and our arms may be what we most need. Our arms around them. Their arms around us. Our arms around each other.

Perhaps we don’t need words at all.

Photography by Anna Langova via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

A canyon called Box

We come to a canyoned place

with the odd name of Box,

once a cave, perhaps, until geology

crushed its roof and opened its water

to course for eternity. Broken souls

stumbling in wilderness, walking

into a terrible layered beauty

of sharp colors, jagged piercing

ridges and sides, center points

tearing at our self-sown shrouds.

We walk: alcoholic, addict, convict,

poet, inhaling dust of generations,

the stream beside us the eyes of God

watering the sorrow of the earth.

Photograph by L.L. Barkat.

Saturday Good Reads: Non-Fiction I’m Not Recommending for Christmas

I’ve covered poetry, and then fiction, and now it’s time to list the non-fiction books I’m not recommending for Christmas. I’m not recommending them because I’m always uncomfortable when people tell me what to read (or buy me books). So I list the best books I’ve read this year, but make it clear I’m not recommending them.

The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford by Wendell Berry.

Letters to Heaven by Calvin Miller.

The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Corporate Soul by David Whyte.

Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing by L.L. Barkat.

The Devil Wears Nada: Satan Exposed! by Tripp York.

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron.

The Province of Joy: Praying with Flannery O’Connor by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell.

At Work As it Is in Heaven: 25 Ways to Re-Imagine the Spiritual Purpose of Your Work by J.B. Wood.

The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer.

Grace for the Race by Dena Dyer.

Chasing Silhouettes: How to help a loved battling an eating disorder by Emily Wierenga.

God and Charles Dickens: Recovering the Christian Voice of a Classic Author by Gary Colledge.

The Exact Place by Margie Haack.

The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion by Tim Challies.

I Told My Soul to Sing: Finding God with Emily Dickinson by Kristin Lemay.

Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World by Simon Callow.

Talking About Detective Fiction by P.D. James.

Related:

Poetry I’m Not Recommending for Christmas

Fiction I’m Not Recommending for Christmas

Photograph by Francisco Farias Jr. via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Talking About Detective Fiction with P.D. James

My wife and I were nosing around the gift shop of the Bodleian Library at Oxford during our recent vacation. She tugged on my sleeve and said, “Did you see the book by P.D. James?”

The book in question was Talking About Detective Fiction, packaged in an attractive boxed slipcover (= not inexpensive). Not only that, it was a numbered limited edition (No. 41 of 450) and autographed by the author. The Bodleian was using it as a fundraiser (see the Bodleian press notice). I looked at the back, half afraid to see the price – and was surprised to see only 30 pounds (about $48 US). (The regular edition is more reasonably priced.)

Since my wife pointed it out, how could I resist?

The truth is, I’ve been an admirer of P.D. James’ detective stories for a long time. I’ve read most of them; her hero Adam Dagleish is part of my reading history. She’s currently 92; she’s been writing for a long time. She received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her writing almost 30 years ago, and she continued to write after that. This particular book was published in 2009, and it has all of the sharp insight and understanding that she brings to her own detective stories.

This is a tour of the history of the detective story – where it came from, how it developed, and where it is today. James walks the reader through the origins – stories by Edgar Allen Poe, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (her nominee for the real start of detective fiction), and then the two authors who more than anyone else turned detective fiction into a distinct genre – Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) and G.K. Chesterton (Father Brown).

James delves into the Golden Age of detective fiction and mysteries (roughly World War I to World War II), the popularity of women writers like Agatha Christie and Josephine Tey, and the contributions of the “hardboiled school” – the only Americans included (Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler) in an otherwise British history of the genre.

But Talking About Detective Fiction is more than a recitation of authors and their works. James examines what it is that makes a detective novel, how she herself started writing, how authors have stayed true or violated detective fiction norms (and who got away with it), and why these books have remained popular.

“We do not expect popular literature to be great literature,” she says, “but fiction which provides excitement, mystery and humour also ministers to essential human needs. We can honour and celebrate the genius which produced Middlemarch, War and Peace and Ulysses without devaluing Treasure Island, The Moonstone and The Inimitable Jeeves.”

James is a fine writer; she’s always been a fine writer, always bringing clarity, mystery and imagination to her stories. She’s managed to do the same thing with Talking About Detective Fiction.

And I’ve got a wonderful souvenir of the Bodleian and Oxford (James lives there, by the way), and of our vacation to the U.K. this past September. (And an autographed copy!)

A Light Shining: 2 Reviews (and a Giveaway)

I’ve tweeted and posted the links on Facebook, but I wanted to make special note here of two of the reviews that have come in for A Light Shining.

Laura Boggess at The Wellspring said this:

“In turns suspenseful and heartwarming, A Light Shining has all the qualities of those classic tales that stay with you for the long journey. These characters become friends and fellow sojourners…making their way into a reader’s heart and encouraging a deeper faith—one that has hands and feet. We all need such role models as Michael and Sarah Kent-Hughes.

“I don’t want to give away the plot, but I was hooked in the first few pages. Glynn Young’s masterfully developed characters and gift of story make this book hard to put down.

“If you are partial to a good yarn, A Light Shining does not disappoint. And if you haven’t read Dancing Priest? You might want to start there. Nothing like a good book to ward off the chill of the cold season coming on.

“Go ahead. Find a cozy. Read all day.

“You are going to want to.”

And Diana Trautwein at Just Wondering said this:

"’A Light Shining’ is a very different book from ‘The Dancing Priest.’ Yes, the same characters are here and some fascinating new ones, too. Yes, there is, once again, cross-continental travel in this saga, as well as glimpses into Michael's everyday life as an Anglican priest. But from the very first sentence, you know that we are most definitely not in Kansas anymore. There is something ominous afoot, a threat that hangs heavy over every page.

“Initially, I found this almost off-putting. I love these characters and did not want anything terrible to happen to them! So as the story began, I was cautious. However, I was very quickly drawn into the unfolding of this drama, once again a willing and happy prisoner of the strong plotting and wonderful characters. I will not go into that plot in this review because I actually think that sense of dread is important to the reading of this particular story. Rather than romance, this story is filled with mystery and intrigue, hooking you early and well.”

Thanks to both Laura and Diana for their wonderful (and encouraging) words.

Giveaway

Finally, we still have a giveaway going on at Emily Weirenga’s place. It will be by random drawing, and the winner gets his or her choice of either Dancing Priest or A Light Shining. Just leave a comment. The winner will be announced tomorrow.

Thanks to Emily for hosting the giveaway.